the Pig. She must not fall in love with the Punter, or get beaten up by the Pimp.
· The Punter must have sex with the Pro, without being arrested by the Pig. He must try to get the Pro to fall in love with him, thereby not having to pay her. He must not be beaten in combat by the Pimp.
· The Pig must arrest the Pimp. He must receive a bribe off the Punter. He must have sex with the Pro, without paying.
· Sex without a Condom card increases the risk of disease by ten points.
· Various illegal drugs can be purchased from the Drug Dealer. If a player experiences a Bad Trip, two stamina points are lost. Poppers increase the strength of Pleasure cards by five points.
· Any player caught in possession of drugs by the Pig loses 6 points, unless they give the drugs to the Pig as a bribe.
· If the Punter is spotted by his Wife, he loses 5 points.
· The Pimp must be male. The Pig must be male. The Pro may be male or female, or transsexual. The Punter may be male or female. If the Punter is male, and the Pro is male, the Punter is deemed to be Homosexual. Homosexuals play the game at greater risk.
· If the Pimp is killed, any other player can become the new Pimp, except for the Pro, for whom there can be no escape.
· The Pig may never be arrested, not even for murder.
· Any player surviving Fetish Booth # 7 is deemed to have won the game, even if their overall objective is not yet reached.
(text ends)
* Addendum. The actual 'game', to which the above leaflet offers instruction, has never been found, nor any mention of it. This has led to certain theories stating that the game was meant to be played 'for real' on the streets of Soho. Some commentators have even speculated that the instructions refer not to a game at all, but to real life.
CHROMOSOFT MIRRORS (V.4.2)
My grandmother, Elisa Gretchen, died before I was born. Any knowledge I had of her life came through borrowed memories, until my discovery of her private journal. I need not go into the details of this discovery, except to say that the primitive nature of the recording medium necessitated the expensive purchase of an antique cd-rom player.
Elisa was on the famous skunk team that came up with the original idea for the Mirrors technology (code-named the 'Alice' project), and was active during all stages of its development and demo-testing. Later on she was assigned to the troubleshooting team, which suffered heavily during the fretful launch period. Version 1.0 was riddled with bugs, and the new interface itself so strangely inhuman that the critics were quick to predict the company's demise, especially with its main competitors riding high on the 'back to nature' campaign of the fashionable DOS revival. Version 1.1 ironed out some of the problems, and v.1.2 introduced the new feedback loop dynamics. It was the major relaunch, with v.2.0, that really kick-started the product's unprecedented success. With a brand-new interface, greater thought-recognition software, and an inspired marketing campaign centred around the slogan, 'Chromosoft Mirrors - where's your head today?', the whole world turned to gaze in on itself.
The problem with Windows - the most famous interface prior to Mirrors - was that the more advanced it became (version 491.7!), the more difficult it was to use. And for all its increasing complexity, still all you ever did was use the technology; it never used you. Thus was the Mirrors project initiated. A new simplicity was called for, something beyond windows, beyond the blinkered one-way gaze. Although my grandmother makes no claim to inventing the actual concept, she does write that the name 'Mirrors' was her invention. It came to her in a flash, one evening in a Parisian hotel bathroom, 'after a rigorous bout of continental-style lovemaking', as she puts
it in her journal.
It wasn't the first system to use thought recognition, of course, but the first to successfully marry it with a usable feedback loop. Put simply, previous attempts allowed you to change the screen by thinking about the changes, but only Chromosoft allowed the information to redirect your thinking in turn. The Mirrors system really was a new way of working, a new way of being.
Where's your head today? Gone downloaded.
As it did with the invention of the typewriter and the word processor, a new type of creation emerged from the mirror. Suddenly, 'speed of subconsciousness' novels were, all the rage. Punctuation mutated into mere rhythm, narrative dissolved, symbols became deeper, more dreamlike, more dangerous.
Version 3.0 introduced the concept to a network. Version 3.4, to the Internet. These were radical upgradings, with long-lasting social effects; because, although it wasn't strictly true that we were all telepathically linked, it certainly felt like it. The Internet's long-promised 'revelation of the global soul' suddenly seemed less of a pipe dream, more of a God-given right. Version 4.0 added little that was new, merely a cosmetic repackaging to fend off the latest clones. 4.1 was another tweakjob, and it was this version that became the standard for the next three years.